by M. Fitzpatrick
mattfitz at oco dot net

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SPECIAL ALERT: Expansion players, play with druids at your own risk! See
below for details on the extremely dangerous DruidDrop bug.

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Introduction

In this new day and age, massively multiplayer online games enjoy a broad
player base: from across national boundaries and age generations we can all
enjoy common interests through Internet gaming.

But with this broader and broader player base each year, an exponentially
increasing problem arises: how to safeguard those who choose to be cooperative
in their play from those who enjoy being malicious and destructive against
others.

Though Blizzard has made great leaps from Diablo to Diablo II in terms of
limiting PK-- player killing or player killers-- and protecting those who do
not wish to partake of it, there remain gaps that malicious users can and will
exploit. The best defense against these exploits is knowledge, and so this
guide begins:

Addendum: Please don't hatemail me! It is true that from this guide
can be assembled a fairly good recipe on how to PK people. Some believe that
this can only serve to further advance PK, but I take a different approach.
If being PK'd is seen by the majority of players as the only necessary step in
learning how not to get PK'd, then there's not enough information out there.
For this reason I choose to raise the awareness level rather than limit it,
and I hope with all sincerity I've made the right choice.

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Player Killers: Who, Why, Where?

Player killers are rampant on battle.net: ask anyone. Expansion or
classic, hardcore or not, they're everywhere. To complicate the problem, the
playerbase is almost universally unsympathetic to those who are PK'd: in their
words, anyone who gets PK'd had it coming; it's good you got killed because
that's how you learn. So it goes; it's a jungle out there.

There are statistical tendencies, of course. High-achieving characters
are likely to be long-standing player killers; virtually all of the top ladder
spots in classic hardcore will belong to PK's at any given time. PK favors
straightforward, high-damage classes over more complex ones: thus, sorceress
is the favored PK class, followed by barbarian. (The sorceress PK also enjoys
the privilege of remote-PK from town using persistent spell effects.) Also
beware druids who currently enjoy a very large PK bug, which will hopefully be
fixed soon. And-- apologies to the American crowd, but the USWest and USEast
realms tend to be loaded with larger concentrations of PK than the Europe and
Asia ones. While morning players enjoy friendly and helpful company, evenings
and weekends U.S. time are prime hours for PK.

However, regardless of these tendencies, care must always be taken, in
every game, especially hardcore. Why? Common sense might dictate that PK's
would avoid hardcore, but this is entirely untrue. Players are too safe in
non-hardcore games... without corpse looting allowed in any form, the loss to
PK is limited to death's toll: 25% of gold on hand and in storage. (Despite
what the game says in Nightmare and Hell modes, you do not lose experience if
you are killed by a player, ever.) On the other hand, the potential loss in
hardcore is grave indeed, and this is precisely what attracts and drives
malicious personalities-- the effective deletion of another character, for
good. Hardcore players beware, and read on:

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The Backup Method

This method, popular since the original Diablo, remains a good way to
protect oneself, though only for non-realm (that is, open) characters. Regular
backups of the player information files can greatly reduce the losses PK can
inflict upon open characters (as small as those losses may be). For utilities
that can accomplish this, consult www.planetdiablo.com's Files section: a
backup tool as well as other useful downloads are offered there.

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Basic Precautions

Be distrustful of high-level characters you don't know joining your game
alone. If somewhat-high level characters join in a group, they're probably
looking to run the secret level, but a single 50+ character joining a normal
game is possibly suspect. All 50+ sorceresses are suspect.

Don't accept favors, party with, or even play in the same game with known
PK's. No matter how smart you think you are, PK's know more tricks to kill you
than the average player can imagine, and completely new glitches and
misfeatures are discovered (and subsequently abused) on roughly a monthly basis!
Though I'll try to keep this document as up-to-date as possible, a decade of
Internet use should have taught the world one thing: never underestimate a
malicious user's ability to get to you when you were sure they couldn't.

For now, at least, it seems you're completely safe while in town; on the
other hand, you're completely vulnerable while out of town. Remember this.
Don't step away from the game without going back to town first, no matter how
deep in the dungeons you are. The reason for this is:

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PK Exploit One: Map Hack

The rundown >

The map hack, a trainer-like utility which modifies a user's interface,
is popular because it makes the more irritating levels in the game more
manageable. Entire maps, monster locations (within a few screens' length),
and player locations (within the same act but not separated by stairs) are
available at a glance.

In the hands of a PK, however, it becomes a dangerous tool to hunt down
unsuspecting players and kill them.

What you can do >

When you hear the Hostile warning, always assume the PK already knows your
precise location. More often than not, the PK had been invited to your party,
and was using the map hack to monitor the area you're in, waiting for the right
time to strike.

Also be mindful of who you invite to join your party. If someone warns
you that a player is PK, consider cancelling the invite or (if they've already
joined) leaving the party until you get more information. By leaving the party,
if the person in question is PK and does go hostile on someone in the party, he
won't automatically go hostile on you.

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PK Exploit Two: Waypoint Ambush

The rundown >

Blizzard did well to make Hostile mode available only while in town, but
care must still be taken: PK's have learned to enable Hostile and traverse
waypoints very quickly. Other town access points are also prime targets for
ambushes: direct town boundaries (Blood Moor, Rocky Waste, Spider Forest,
Outer Steppes, or Bloody Foothills), as well as the Lut Gholein sewer grate,
side sewer entrance, and harem entrance.

What you can do >

If you're a large distance from any town access point (waypoints, town
gate boundaries, and other act 2 exits), you may safely create a town portal,
return to town, and wait it out. However, anytime you are near a town access
point, be prepared to quit the game immediately upon hearing the Hostile
warning. Again, assume the PK knows exactly where you are, and will get to
you as fast as a bot would.

In Windows, Alt-F4 is generally the best method for escaping ambushes of
this type: most Windows users are familiar with the keystrokes already, and
it'll quit your character from the game immediately. Exiting normally through
the menu is also an option, if you're quick, and will save you restarting your
application, reloading any hacks or trainers, logging back into battle.net,
etc. This Esc-Down-Enter keystroke combination (to exit through the menu) can
also be a lifesaver thusly.

Once you hit level 9 in hardcore, resists and blocking become the primary
focus for your equipment: maximum resists maximizes your chances of surviving
a sorceress's waypoint ambush, while good blocking increases the survival rate
against barbarians and amazons.

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PK Exploit Three: Hydra Ambush

The rundown >

If a sorceress, while in the same party or neutral, lights a fire wall
beneath you or raises hydras around you, it won't hurt you. However, if she
uses a town portal, the fire wall and hydras stay lit, and if she goes
hostile-- well, you might not guess what happens next, at first, but because
of a game misfeature (I suspect it's an outright bug), the spell effects can
turn from neutral to hostile where they lay, and the PK can kill you
remotely just like that, from within the safety of town.

Theoretically, other persistent spell effects will follow the same
pattern (Fire Wall is confirmed, other spells are as yet uncertain), but
these are usually spells with smaller range than Hydra and easily avoided.

What you can do >

PK's who use this ambush will usually ask you a question before opening
the town portal to distract you, or be partnered with someone else who'll
distract you-- sounds crazy, but it has happened. If you must type a
response, open a portal and do it in town. Better yet, if you see a hydra,
just don't play unless you've got great hit points and godly resists.

Here, maximum resists will again be of use: a person with 75% fire
resistance and even mediocre life need not fear a Hydra trap too much, as
long as they make an attempt to move away.

PK Exploit Four: Dupe Fever

The rundown >

Expansion players report a new influx of duplicated items flooding
their realms as of this patch (1.09d). Classic realms do not appear to be
experiencing this problem at this time; the duplication bug is rumored
to be rooted in an expansion-only feature.

Even without an active duplication bug open, some duplicated items
are likely to always be in circulation, and, more often than not, in the
hands of PK's. The currently high concentration of duplicated items
serves to make PK more efficient, with insanely high damage and
guaranteed one-hit kills more easily attained.

What you can do >

Always assume the PK is capable of scoring a one-hit kill against
you. PK's custom-tailor their character to damage and nothing but
damage-- the math is on their side. Whether or not there are extra dupes
floating around in circulation should be irrelevant-- this assumption is
always a good one, as even non-duped low-level rares can score fast
one-hit kills.

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PK Exploit Five: Shadow PK (Expansion only)

The rundown >

It's been reported to me that assassins can summon shadow copies, go
hostile, and then quit while the shadow copy sticks around to kill the
victim. (Thanks to SampleH5180 for this report.)

I can confirm that the assassin summons are among the more dangerous
minions in the game as far as PK is concerned, and that all minions can
continue damaging a hostiled target even after their summoner steps into
town at the boundary. I'll work on full confirmation of this report ASAP.

What you can do >

Just keep an eye out if you're hostiled by an assassin who then
quits. Just in case. Also, don't let summon-reliant classes duel you
at the town boundaries-- it's almost certain they'll just step back into
the safety of town and make their minions unfairly do the work.

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PK Exploit Six: DruidDrop (Expansion only)

The rundown >

Reports of a new abusable link-drop bug involving a druid skill have
been confirmed in this patch (1.09d), the first documented abuses of the
bug occuring over the weekend of January 5-6, 2002. Playability in the
Expansion Realms has already been severely impacted, and the bug will
probably warrant a quick and dirty server-side fix from Blizzard while
they continue working on their next patch.

Though Blizzard has not yet officially recognized this exploit, it has
been discussed and confirmed across several fan sites, message boards, and
battle.net channels.

This exploit involves raising one of the druid skills to 32 or higher
(not as hard as it sounds) and invoking it. Other clients will lack the
game data to handle this, thus generating an Assertion Error and immediately
dropping communication with the battle.net server. An Assertion Error will
not send the proper signal to quit the player's character from the game, and
the character will remain connected to the server for several moments.
During this time, the Druid can PK the dropped player easily.

In other words, mid- to high-level Druids can potentially crash every
other player in the game, freezing them where they stand and picking them
off at leisure.

What you can do >

Until this is fixed, sad to say, everyone had best avoid grouping with
all level 45+ Druids until further notice. That's all that can be done. I
greatly look forward to removing this section from my next revision of this
document.

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Correspondence and Questions

> Nate writes:

... the MapHack, while dirty and cheating, could also be used against
PKers, could it not? If you get the hack, and they have the hack,
well. I'm reminded a bit of what I've read of the Cold War, they have
the bomb, you have the bomb, etc.

A good observation. I can confirm that the MapHack not only displays
monsters within a radius of roughly three screens, but also can display
neutral and hostile players and minions in the same radius. The MapHack
can give you a little bit of breathing room against PK's, and ease the
hardcore paranoia a notch.

> B. Smith writes:

... I must say, that you must be the most paranoid person I've ever
seen.

You're right. I've tweaked my recommendation for grouping with Hydra
sorceresses a little bit, but my distrust for Hydra sorceresses is very
well-established in the hardcore community.

And you did guess correctly-- I do primarily play hardcore, thus my
heightened interest in producing this guide.

> David H. writes:

Why doesn't Blizzard add a feature to give the user the option to
*prevent* PK'ing in games *they* create? (checkbox perhaps?)

Beats me. During my stint as a MUD-coder, the first thing I coded was a
victim-side (as opposed to aggressor-side) pkill toggle. Flag was on, you
were OK to duel. Flag was off, nobody could touch you. The current setup
in Diablo II just sounds like a bad design judgement-- though, of course,
remains light-years ahead of how it was in the original Diablo.

> Anderson R. writes:

By now, with the expansion, there are plenty of venomassins, with tal
dol mal in a claw weapon that deals 400+ poison damage in 4 seconds
that have became pk´s themselves.

I believe it! Not to mention the charms and other items that can bloat the
poison damage even further! The math involved in poison damage calculation
is tricky, and I find tricky math is the player-killer's playground.

Thanks for pointing this out-- fire cold and lightning resists are
sufficient in classic but poison resist (and not merely poison length
reduction) is just as necessary in expansion.

> King writes:

I found out squelching is the best way when someone goes hostile at
me ... I faced some very serious problems lately, some racism
problems ... all Asian players moved to USWest realm after they found
out all Asia(1, 2, 3) realms are dominated by Koreans ... are
Australians or folks in New Zealand welcomed in US realm just because
they look like white people to Americans? ...

Thanks for reminding me of this problem. I have personally seen people
get PK'd over race. A less-than-perfect grasp of the English language
tends to set people off more on the Internet than in real life, but also,
let's face it, people can be downright mean about race.

I'm sorry to hear things have gotten so bad on the Asia realms for people
gaming outside Korea. Personally, I enjoy the company of all Asians--
though most Americans don't have the luxury of knowing a little bit of
Japanese and Cantonese. Your best bet is just to stick to more tolerant
players, and just leave games where they refuse to appreciate you as a
player and fellow Netizen.

Is there any way I can prevent a pker from seeing how much life I got
left on me when duel? That's strange because there are times that I
see players runing short of life as he got hit by me, and other times
I don't see any change ... when I put my mouse point onto the
characters as if he was stone skin character or something....

First off, there isn't any way to stop someone else from seeing your life
bar. For the most part, the life bars are accurate though they may be a
little time-delayed due to lag.

Characters tailor-made for PK generally have maximized their damage but
have also done a good job raising their life points and resistances. A
character that's not meant for PK will generally find themselves doing
little damage back-- just as though their opponent had stone skin. They
don't have stone skin; just being tailor-made PK gives them that big an
advantage over a soloing, magic finding, or party support character.

> Phoenix writes:

Just wanted to say thank you for this excellent guide - it introduced
me to a number of different aspects of PKing and techniques that can
be exploited by PKers that I hadn't recognized before.

Precisely my intent! Thanks for the mail, and do be sure to spread the
news. Only by knowing the exploits can hardcore players take steps to
safeguard themselves.

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Contact

All contributions, clarifications, questions and concerns are
welcomed and appreciated-- I'll be happy to credit you in the next update!
My email address is mattfitz at oco dot net. Please identify this guide
in the subject of your email so I know it's important and has nothing to do
with the diploma-mill spam I get on a daily basis.

TD>